Tim Gardiner

Skeleton Wood

The wood is always beautiful in late summer; blood-red berries hang off mountain ash, grasshoppers sing their melancholic songs. Running along the sandy path, my t-shirt catches a loose rose thorn, tearing fabric and skin. Stopping to catch my breath on the wood’s edge, I gaze through towering thistles across cattle-strewn marshes; the old mill, sails-stripped long ago, resolute against an east wind. Stepping forward without care, I plunge deep into the mire. Luckily I bob up quickly and daddy grabs my arm.

sundew
still drowning
in the old lies